Advisory:

Rather than glory in this victory, indeed, he was keen to talk about harder times. “I think the big thing [to tell people] is ‘don’t be afraid to fail’. I think in our society today, you know, Instagram, Twitter, it’s a highlight reel. It’s all the good things. Then when you look at it, then you think like, ‘wow’, when you had a rough day or your life’s not as good as that, you’re failing.

“And failure’s a part of life, that’s a part of building character, and growing. Without failure, who would you be? I wouldn’t be up here if I hadn’t fallen a thousand times, made mistakes. We all are human, we have weaknesses, and throughout this being able to share that and be transparent.

“I know that when I listen to people speak, and they share their weaknesses, I’m listening because I can resonate. So, I’m not perfect, I’m not Superman. I might be in the NFL, and we might have just won the Super Bowl, but I still have daily struggles … And that’s really just been the message, simple. If something’s going on in your life and you’re struggling, embrace it, because you’re growing.”

Phone-addicted teens are unhappy

Teens whose eyes are habitually glued to their smartphones are markedly unhappier, said study lead author and San Diego State University and professor of psychology Jean M. Twenge.

“Although this study can’t show causation, several other studies have shown that more social media use leads to unhappiness, but unhappiness does not lead to more social media use,” said Twenge, author of “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy–And Completely Unprepared for Adulthood.”

Looking at historical trends from the same age groups since the 1990s, the researchers found that the proliferation of screen devices over time coincided with a general drop-off in reported happiness in U.S. teens. Specifically, young people’s life satisfaction, self-esteem and happiness plummeted after 2012. That’s the year that the percentage of Americans who owned a smartphone rose above 50 percent, Twenge noted.

This middle school teacher allows all students to turn in late work—no matter how valid or invalid, good or bad, truthful or deceptive the reasons. Read about her philosophy and how students are held accountable.

Strategies:

Writing

Youtube Essays

YouTube video essays are long-form (relative to many other internet videos) critical videos that make arguments about media and culture. They’re usually meticulously narrated and edited, juxtaposing video footage, images, audio, and text to make an argument much like a writer would do in a traditional essay.

How Can They Be Used in Classrooms?

First, a caveat: Most of the channels below offer content that’ll work best in an upper-middle or high school classroom. Some videos can also be explicit, so you’ll want to do some browsing.

Conversation starter or lesson hook: Many of these videos serve as great two- to 10-minute introductions to topics relevant to classrooms across the curriculum.

Active viewing opportunity: Since video essays present often complex arguments, invite students to watch and rewatch videos and outline their theses, key points, and conclusions.

Research project: Have students find more examples that support, or argue against, a video’s argument. Students could also write a response to a video essay.

Copyright lesson: Video essays are a great example of fair use. Show students that by adding their own commentary, they can use copyrighted material responsibly.

Assessment: Have students create their own video essays to demonstrate learning or media-creation skills like editing.

Resources:

Cue Prompter

MentiMeter

Mentimeter is an easy-to-use presentation software used by more than 8 million people. With Mentimeter you can create fun and interactive presentations. We help you make your events, presentations, lectures, and workshops innovative and memorable.

The Strange Brands in Your Instagram Feed

The material has the softness of a Las Vegas carpet and the rich sheen of a velour jumpsuit. The fabric is so synthetic, it could probably be refined into bunker fuel for a ship.

What Ganon does is pick suppliers he’ll never know to ship products he’ll never touch. All his effort goes into creating ads to capture prospective customers, and then optimizing a digital environment that encourages them to buy whatever piece of crap he’s put in front of them.

Given the array of behavioral tricks arrayed against your average Internet user, some of them take the free lion bracelet deal. But for those that don’t, merely by visiting his site, they’ve been tagged in Facebook’s system because Ganon has installed a standard Facebook tracking pixel. That means Ganon can now re-target those people who visited but left without purchasing anything through Facebook. And he spends a lot of time designing and testing ads that will bring them back for the purchase.

Avoid Binary Thinking. Go To The Grey.

Much of what we do in education falls into grey areas. Yet, many of the conversations we have regarding education seem to use black and white statements and fall into the category of binary, or dichotomous, thinking. Binary thinking leads to look at ideas in education as right or wrong and good or bad. It can create an ‘us vs them’ mentality – “You are either with us or you are not!” It can also prevent engagement in the conversations we need to have.

Personalized Learning Vs Personalization of Learning

Laura presented the idea of “personalization of learning,” meaning more in how does the teacher understand the student, build on their interests, and create learning opportunities for the student. I can get behind this idea.

The personalization of learning creates the opportunity for more depth and authenticity, whereas “personalized learning” seems to be more about knowing the “stuff”.1